New AT&T Web portal: Watch TV online

AT&T's activated a new entertainment website called U-verse Online that lets subscribers watch more than 100,000 pieces of programming on their computers, including TV shows, movies and sporting events. Customers logging in to the site can also remotely program their home DVRs, set parental controls and personalize their weather, sports, traffic and stock preferences for their U-verse TV "U-bar" feature.

A quick glance at the portal after logging in shows the videos are from Hulu and include a couple commercials when you start one up. And many movies are simply snippets: for example, U-verse Online gives you only a couple of minutes of "Predators 2." You can browse by title, genre, studio or network. I'm not finding anything amazingly innovative here, and the selection of content feels a bit limited. Well, at least AT&T isn't charging extra for it.

And it's another way for TV viewers to get their entertainment on a different kind of screen, a tactic Time Warner is trying with its iPad app that's being met with some resistance from media companies.